1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display apparatus and a method of driving the display apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to a display apparatus that may have improved visibility and transmittance and a method of driving the display apparatus.
2. Discussion of the Background
In general, a liquid crystal display (LCD) includes a display panel having a lower substrate, an upper substrate facing the lower substrate, and a liquid crystal layer interposed between the lower substrate and the upper substrate to display an image. The display panel includes a plurality of gate lines, a plurality of data lines, and a plurality of pixels connected to the gate lines and the data lines.
As compared to other types of display apparatuses, LCDs have a relatively narrow viewing angle. In order to improve the viewing angle, various driving methods for the LCD, such as a patterned vertical alignment (PVA) mode, a multi-domain vertical alignment (MVA) mode, and a super-patterned vertical alignment (S-PVA) mode, have been suggested.
The S-PVA mode LCD includes pixels each having two sub pixels, and each sub pixel includes a main pixel electrode and a sub pixel electrode to which different sub voltages are applied to form domains having different grays from each other in the pixel. Since human eyes watching the S-PVA mode LCD recognize an intermediate value of the two sub voltages, the S-PVA mode LCD prevents deterioration of side visibility due to distortion of a gamma curve under an intermediate gray scale, thereby improving the side visibility of the S-PVA mode LCD.
The S-PVA mode LCD may be a coupling capacitor type (CC-type) or a two-transistor type (TT-type) according to the driving method thereof. The CC-type S-PVA mode LCD further includes a coupling capacitor between the main pixel electrode and the sub pixel electrode. The voltage level of a data voltage is dropped and then applied to the sub pixel electrode as a sub pixel voltage, which has a lower voltage level than that of the main pixel voltage. In the TT-type S-PVA mode LCD, the main pixel voltage and the sub pixel voltage having different voltage levels are applied to the main pixel electrode and the sub pixel electrode, respectively, using two transistors.
Recently, a charge-shared type (CS-type) S-PVA mode LCD has been suggested to prevent brightness deterioration and image blurring. However, in the CS-type S-PVA mode LCD, the transmittance may deteriorate when the visibility is improved, and the visibility may be degraded when the transmittance is improved.